


Break

by idrilsdarkwritings (idrilhadhafang)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Bashing, Character Death Is Holdo, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Leia Organa Does NOT Deserve Better, Leia Organa bashing, M/M, Past Character Death, Past Torture, Physical Abuse, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Protective Kylo Ren, Suicidal Poe Dameron, Twisted Hurt/Comfort, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, in a twisted way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 17:13:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19772770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilsdarkwritings
Summary: There’s only so much Poe can take.





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**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Wild Card — Abuse
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
> Author’s Notes: Warning for abuse. Also, I know I’m going to get upset responses from Leia fans. Let’s say I needed to get some poison out.

The crack of a hand across his face was unexpected, and yet at the same time, Poe Dameron supposed that he should have seen it coming all along. General Organa glared at him, and the look on her face — it was worse than just mildly put out. It was like Poe really was something bad — not someone, but something, and that was enough to make him feel sick to his stomach.   
  
“I should have known,” General Organa said. “I should have known the moment you joined the Resistance that you would cause nothing but trouble. I thought even your worse qualities could be assets. I was wrong. It’s your fault.”  
  
“What?” Poe said. “How is this my fault?”  
  
“If you’d actually listened to Holdo, maybe she’d still be alive.”  
  
Kriff, but it seemed that a Captain’s guts were meant to be punched. _She really thinks that I caused Holdo to die?_ Poe thought. Even that idea, that he could have contributed to Holdo crashing into the Supremacy, was enough to make him genuinely feel sick.   
  
General Organa continued. “You’re nothing but a misery to everyone around you. If you’d listened to me during the D’Qar evacuation, maybe Rose wouldn’t have lost her sister.”  
  
Kriff, that was unfair. “She volunteered!” Poe said.   
  
“Then she was an idiot.”  
  
“You can’t just call her that!” Poe said. “You have no idea what it was like out there — ”  
  
“I know that you sacrificed her life for your own selfish, macho glory of taking on a dreadnaught.”  
  
 _Macho?_ “So, you think I just took out a dreadnaught to...prove I was a man?" Poe knew he shouldn’t be getting angry. At least he was feeling like he was lower than the bantha poodoo you’d accidentally step in. That was a plus. He was in the right direction in that regard.   
  
"Exactly.”  
  
“It wasn’t because of that. You know dreadnaughts. You know they’re fleet killers. If they’d followed us through hyperspace, they could have killed us all.” A beat. “You think I should have made daisy chains with the dreadnaught and talked about my feelings? I couldn’t — ”  
  
The punch to the nose he didn’t expect. Even as Poe fell to the ground, he couldn’t help but feel dizzy, dazed. The General had never gotten...violent before.   
  
“You have no place in this Resistance. You come from nothing,” said the General. “You’re nothing. I wish I’d seen it earlier.”  
  
***  
  
Poe passed off his broken nose to everyone else as a joke. “You should have seen the other...guy,” he said, weakly, but in truth, he almost wanted to cry. The General was right. He had ruined everything. He’d do anything — even use one of those burial grounds from a horror holo Ben had watched with him before things had gone to hell, to resurrect Paige and Holdo. In that moment, Poe Dameron almost wished he had been in Paige’s place, and Paige in his.   
  
The explosion — kriff, it was going to join his nightmares, along with the feeling of Kylo’s mental fingers digging around inside his brain. The massacre of Tuanul. The deaths at Starkiller. Ben leaving him, over and over and over again. Things that were, plain and simply, his fault.   
  
“No one blames you,” Jess said gently about Paige’s death, but somehow, Poe didn’t believe her. Jess was probably just one of a few people who didn’t blame him. The rest...they’d probably martyred Holdo. Holdo deserved to live. He deserved nothing.  
  
That knowledge already sat like tar in his heart.  
  
***  
  
Capture by Kylo was almost easy. When he was recklessly endangering himself, wondering if this was his time, or this. It was outside Bespin that Poe was captured. He’d done a good job playing the smartmouth up until Kylo walked towards him — and Leia’s name had slipped out despite himself —  
  
Kylo suddenly drew away, tilting his head. “What do you mean, ‘General Organa’?” he said.   
  
“It’s none of your business,” Poe snapped.   
  
“Did she hurt you?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Poe said. “Really.”  
  
Another tilt of Kylo’s head. “If it’s true...no one hurts you but me.”  
  
“She doesn’t hurt me. Undeservingly, I mean.”  
  
“So she did.” Kylo closed his eyes. He actually looked pained. Why? Ben should have taken pleasure in hurting him, in seeing him hurt by another. Instead...  
  
"Why does it matter to you?” Poe said. “You...” He couldn’t even bear to finish the sentence in that moment. Was he just made to be hurt and betrayed?   
  
“I did hurt you,” Kylo said. “I...am sorry, for what it’s worth.”  
  
Poe supposed he didn’t expect it. Not that it was good enough. But he didn’t expect it, all the same.  
  
Kylo’s finger caressed the scar near Poe’s temple, the scar that hadn’t quite healed. The scar near Poe’s lip. Two remnants of the torture. “I do...wish there was some way to heal those scars.”  
  
Poe had a feeling he wasn’t just talking about the physical scars. “They’re fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”  
  
“Still.”  
  
Kylo had to leave, but Poe could say he was surprised nonetheless.  
  
***  
  
Poe didn’t tell Kylo where the Resistance was. Kylo seemed, if anything, not particularly inclined to invade Poe’s mind again. Instead, he seemed bent on something else. Namely, what exactly Leia had done to Poe.  
  
“Why do you care?” Poe said.  
  
Kylo sighed. “I’d like to let the past die, and yet with you, I can’t do it. Do you...remember when I told you about Darth Sion and the Jedi Exile? How he loved her, in his way, and that led to his destruction?”  
  
“Are you saying you’re being held together by hate?” Even that idea was enough to make Poe feel sick.  
  
“In a manner of speaking. Like it or not, I doubt I can get you out of my heart. Or my head.”  
  
“Why did you leave me?” Poe said.  
  
“To save you.”  
  
Poe snorted. “Good job.” he said sarcastically.  
  
“I know,” Kylo said. “If I knew any of this would happen, I would have taken you with me.”  
  
“I couldn’t have done what you did.”  
  
“But we would have been together. You would have been treated as the precious thing you really are. Not...humiliated and broken.” Kylo growled deep in his throat. “If I knew what she was doing to you...”  
  
“She didn’t...” Then Poe broke off. Did she? Was it his fault?  
  
“She didn’t hit me. But her words could hurt as much as a slap.” Kylo took a deep breath. “I’d say hitting you is pretty blatant.”  
  
Poe knew he didn’t want to admit it. Knew he wanted to hold on to the tattered remnants of his hero. And yet even those remnants were coming apart and there was nothing he could do to stop it.  
  
“I know.” Poe said.   
  
***  
  
It was on the third day of his imprisonment that Kylo asked him to join him. “We don’t have to be separated again,” Kylo said. “Separated, we were lonely. We don’t have to be that. Not again.”  
  
Poe paused. Truth be told, he had been dying inside a little bit without Ben, though he did what he could to hide it. “You want me to join you?”  
  
“What else did you expect?”  
  
“Ben...I can’t just betray my friends.”  
  
“But you could be safe with me. Free with me. I love you.”  
  
Poe swallowed. There were so many possibilities. Too many. He couldn’t stay with the Resistance. The cause was good, but their leader...well, their leader had become almost unrecognizable as a person. Poe supposed now was the time when he just broke. Out of loneliness. Out of pain. Maybe it was time for Poe to break.  
  
Kylo held out his hand.  
  
Poe took it and grasped it.


End file.
